Over the years I have repeatedly warning on this website that the long-term consequence of 'cheap peak oil' will be the slow death of the welfare state. Within a generation, the welfare state as we know it will be dead. Only a threadbare, back-to-basics Edwardian system will survive.A number of new reports confirm that the austerity policies pursued in Europe by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund are condemning tens of millions to poverty and fueling levels of social inequality unknown in the postwar period.
In September, the Oxfam aid agency issued a report warning that the poverty trap in Europe, which already encompasses more than 120 million people, could swell by an additional 25 million in the near future with devastating social and economic consequences. (See: “Up to 150 million in Europe threatened with poverty”)
The Oxfam findings have now been underlined by a report from the Red Cross which conducted a social survey in the first half of this year of the 28 countries of the EU, plus a further 14 states in the Balkans, eastern Europe and central Asia.
In the introduction to the 68 page report, the director of the Red Cross in Europe writes: “As the economic crisis has planted its roots, millions of Europeans live with insecurity, uncertain about what the future holds.”
The report continues: “….quiet desperation (is) spreading among Europeans, resulting in depression, resignation and loss of hope. Compared to 2009, millions more find themselves queuing for food, unable to buy medicine nor access healthcare. Millions are without a job and many of those who still have work face difficulties to sustain their families due to insufficient wages and skyrocketing prices.
“Many from the middle class have spiraled down to poverty. The amount of people depending on Red Cross food distributions in 22 of the surveyed countries has increased by 75% between 2009 and 2012. More people are getting poor, the poor are getting poorer.”
The Red Cross had conducted an initial survey of European social development in 2009, one year after the 2008 financial crash, and the year in which the EU and IMF commenced austerity policies in a number of European countries in order to refloat the continent’s banking system. Four years later, Red Cross officials collecting material for the new social survey were “surprised” and “shocked” at what they found.
The report states that over 18 million people in Europe receive EU-funded food aid, while 43 million do not get enough to eat each day. This is in addition to another 120 million at the risk of poverty. The report stresses the long-term social consequences of growing poverty and describes the explosion of unemployment across Europe as “a ticking time bomb” which was increasing the risk of social unrest and upheaval.
In response to the crisis, the Red Cross plans to commence setting up soup kitchens for the poor in Britain for the first time since the Second World War. Welfare organisations had already revealed in May that more than half a million Britons are now reliant on food handouts, with the number expected to increase over the winter.
Having reduced tens of millions in Europe to misery, the financial aristocracy and their bagmen in all political parties are now openly discussing how to dispense altogether with the welfare state in Europe. In his recent speech to open the new parliamentary year, the King of the Netherlands declared that the Dutch government—a coalition of social democrats and liberals—was planning the “replacement of the traditional welfare state by a participatory society”.
State support for the sick, disabled, unemployed, the poor and pensioners is to be replaced by “a participatory society”, with workers and their families expected to carry the entire burden for the rest of society, while the wealthy are freed from taxes and any social responsibility.
Speaking on behalf of Spain’s nouveau riche, the conservative Madrid daily ABC welcomed the Dutch government’s initiative. Featuring a cartoon with mourners resting flowers on the grave of the European welfare state, the ABC comment likens the continent’s welfare system to a “gigantic pyramid scheme a la Bernie Madoff” and a “rip off”, which could no longer be sustained by the “paternalistic state”.
Soup kitchens for the poor, recalling Dickensian Britain, and levels of labour exploitation comparable to China and neo-colonial countries—this is already the reality in Europe for tens of millions of workers and their families.
This article summaries this process within the last five years since the financial crash... we have barely started.
I strongly advise preparing for a more self-sufficient future, save some money, have a rainy day fund and consider in the longer term joining the Masons.
After all, pre the post-WW2 welfare state, societies like the Masons were a kind of welfare state in practise.
